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South Africa, where 79% of the world's rhinos live, said it aims to come up with a plan by the end of 2030 to dismantle an almost half-century ban on trading the endangered animals' horns. The proposal, contained in a draft of the country's first rhino biodiversity-management plan released late Tuesday, is controversial because poaching of the animals for their horns has decimated their populations across Africa. The horns are ground into powder and sold in east Asia where they are falsely believed to cure cancer and other ailments.

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officers have arrested two men with 10 pieces of elephant tusks weighing 89 kilogrammes valued at Sh8.9 million. The officers from Mwingi, accompanied by a KWS covert team from the headquarters in Nairobi were acting on intelligence information. The officers intercepted the vehicle the two were in at around 1 pm. KWS said one of the suspects, who was driving the vehicle, was an officer with a government agency.

It's clear why the illegal wildlife trade exists. Where there's consumer demand for products from endangered species, there are bound to be networks seeking to profit from that demand. But what about the motivations of individual offenders? TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade NGO, decided to simply ask them. The researchers interviewed 73 people in South African correctional centers, who had been convicted of crimes related to rhinos, abalone, or cycads (ancient palm-like plants that have been called "the world's most endangered plants").